And how do you quantify usability in $, i.e. what is the usability:cost ratio, and it's arrived at that value?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ya, and don’t forget that the MacBook Pro has more ports than the MacBook Air, has much longer battery runtime, a higher quality display, better sound system, etc. 👍🏻
So with the RAM being shared with the GPU you have less than 8GB, it’s only going to take a few programs open and that RAM is full therefore you are going to have a really crappy experience.
Plus think about it, even a cheap PS5, Series X, hell even my Steam Deck comes with 16GB RAM. 8GB is not usable no ifs or buts.
Real-world 8 GB Macs have been shown to not provide "a really crappy experience".
Memory is shared, not split. CPU and GPU have full access to all 8 GB of the memory. It's not partitioned such that certain amount of memory is reserved for CPU or GPU.
I’ve opened a lot more than just a few programs on an 8GB RAM M1 Mac, and it ran just fine, hardly a crappy experience. It actually outperformed my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with an SSD and 16GB of RAM (of course that particular MacBook is old, but I’ve also seen newer Intel MacBooks get clobbered by the M1 with half the ram.
@ProfessionalFan
Are you disagreeing with what I first hand experienced? This is just beyond ridiculous, I’ve seen these comparisons several times, I have personal experience with both, and all you have is, “but I don’t think that’s right”. I don’t care if you agree with my conclusion or not, but at least don’t pretend that my actual experience doesn’t count for anything, when you clearly haven’t had personal experience with this, or, at least, you’ve been anything but forthcoming with it…
Are you disagreeing with what I first hand experienced? This is just beyond ridiculous, I’ve seen these comparisons several times, I have personal experience with both, and all you have is, “but I don’t think that’s right”. I don’t care if you agree with my conclusion or not, but at least don’t pretend that my actual experience doesn’t count for anything, when you clearly haven’t had personal experience with this, or, at least, you’ve been anything but forthcoming with it…
I've had the same experience, my M1 far outperformed my 2012 (I did actually have 16GB of RAM in it before one of the sticks went bad, and I just removed a stick and eventually replaced it with a cheap 8GB set to get dual channel back).
But we're also talking about a 2012 vs a 2020, and the single threaded performance is about a 3x bump with a 5x bump in multithreaded performance over that time frame. It's unsurprising that the M1 far outperforms it (even with half the RAM).
I've also used 8GB and 16GB Apple Silicon Macs, so I think I can compare on similar architectures (though, to be fair, we would need to have exactly the same SOC to isolate the memory's impact if we want to be scientific, though many have done exactly this kind of a test and proven similar results). In my experience, 8GB Macs perform well, but I have run plenty of workloads that simply ran better on 16GB. Many of them weren't particularly "heavy workloads", but were just multitasking centered. These are the kinds of workloads where the differences can often be noticed (even on Apple Silicon) even though 8GB still does perform quite well (surprisingly well if we're being honest) for its spec.
Both experiences are valid. Yours are, as are mine. I don't think we would disagree on that.
Wow.... high-end, memory-intensive applications perform best on a configuration with the most RAM.
Did you know......?
The batteries in MacBook Pros require periodic charging. And if you use a higher wattage charger, it will charge faster - although my benchmarking isn't completed yet. I'm currently testing a 20W charger against a 96W USB-C adapter.
Did you know......?
The batteries in MacBook Pros require periodic charging. And if you use a higher wattage charger, it will charge faster - although my benchmarking isn't completed yet. I'm currently testing a 20W charger against a 96W USB-C adapter.
Thank you for the well reasoned response. I fully understand the age gap between my Mid 2012 and an M1 Mac, and that’s why I pointed that out when I was discussing it. But I’ve also heard from friends who tested an 8GB RAM MacBook Air against a 16GB RAM i7 or i9 MacBook Pro from the prior generation, and the 8GB MacBook Air held it’s own and actually outperformed the Pro in several areas, including having somewhere around 20 video streams playing at once without as much as a hiccup, while the Intel was getting hot, and stuttering. I’m not saying 8GB RAM is sufficient for all workflows, in fact, 16GB isn’t enough for some. But I don’t see it as a problem that a cheaper lower base spec exists, even if we disagreed with the current price point and wanted it cheaper. That’s the logical leap some are making here that I really just can’t understand. Even if you think the current base spec is too expensive for what’s offered, why wouldn’t just reducing the current base spec price be the solution, rather than eliminating it all together? I think we could probably both agree that there could still be a place for an 8GB RAM MacBook Pro for those who don’t need as much RAM, but want to save some money, even if the 16GB configuration were priced like the 8GB one is currently. Also, I think you and I could agree that the characterization of “more than three apps on the 8GB Mac, and it’s a crappy experience” is a bit much. I’ve run plenty more than 3 apps at once, and it ran just fine. I appreciate your response, it’s nice to move away from some of the hyperbole being lobbed around in here, it’s like a breath of fresh air. 👍🏻I've had the same experience, my M1 far outperformed my 2012 (I did actually have 16GB of RAM in it before one of the sticks went bad, and I just removed a stick and eventually replaced it with a cheap 8GB set to get dual channel back).
But we're also talking about a 2012 vs a 2020, and the single threaded performance is about a 3x bump with a 5x bump in multithreaded performance over that time frame. It's unsurprising that the M1 far outperforms it (even with half the RAM).
I've also used 8GB and 16GB Apple Silicon Macs, so I think I can compare on similar architectures (though, to be fair, we would need to have exactly the same SOC to isolate. the memory's impact if we want to be scientific, though many have done exactly this kind of a test). In my experience, 8GB Macs perform well, but I have run plenty of workloads that ran better on 16GB (and many of them weren't particularly "heavy workloads", but were really just multitasking centered). 8GB absolutely does perform fine for everyday users, but in my experience, 16GB is enough of a bump for me to recommend for the kinds of users who multitask a lot. It is a noticeable difference for me, even if 8GB performed very well for its spec.
Both experiences are valid. Yours are, as are mine. I don't think we would disagree on that.
I'm floored people actually defend the indefensible. You must be an AAPL shareholder.
I'd say $1999 for the basic M3 Pro, or less than that for any clearance M1 Pro / M2 Pro.
Basic M2 and M3 give me basically zero reason to buy over the basic M1.
Yea, it really just depends on what the bottleneck really is. 8GB isn't really that much of a bottleneck for the "typical" everyday user (at least, not now in 2023, I'm sure it will be different in four or five years). If all you've got is a browser and four or five other light apps open, you will probably see some compressed memory and maybe some swap usage, but it's unlikely to really be more of a bottleneck than the Intel CPU was, so it's going to outperform it by a pretty large margin. For a lot of users, that's their use case. 8GB is perfectly sufficient for those users (which, again, is a decent chunk of the market).
Personally, on Apple Silicon (between my M2 Pro and my M1 Macs, which again is technically not the same SOC, they're separated by one generation), here is what I noticed: On the M1, things were almost instant if nothing else was open. Apps would open very quickly, task switching was nearly instant. Once I had a bunch of browser tabs and several other apps open, the difference in speed would start to become more noticeable. Apps would take a couple seconds longer to launch or refresh, etc. The computer was still remarkably snappy, I would describe it as similar to the difference you see when you turn low power mode on. It's noticeable but minor.
That slowdown on task switching isn't really there for these same workloads on the 16GB Mac. My 16GB system is pretty much always just as snappy, no matter what I'm running on it (whether it's clean off a fresh boot or whether I have twelve other apps open). My M1 could run most of these same workloads just as well, but it would hang a little longer primarily when launching new apps or switching between apps that have to be swapped in (though again, while it was enough to be noticeable, it hardly enough to be even remotely described as "slow". Even with a bunch of stuff open, my 8GB system still felt faster and more snappy than any of my Intel systems ever did.)
Last edited:
I wasn't even defending anything in that post. Was just trying to figure out how the magic $1599 number was arrived at.
It's because of compressed memory page thrashing. macOS tries to avoid swapping until forced to so you have compressed pages much sooner on the 8GB, right after boot up. Without memory compression technology then we'd have 32GB as that standard macOS memory requirement due to the bloat.
The M3 Pro is not the point of contention here.
While I understand those additional specs don't personally offer you anything, they offer others some kind of advantage/benefit, which makes the ladder of prices make sense.
The graphics are a constant usage, not transient, so you can basically just subtract that usage from the 8GB, since it will never be available for anything else.
Oh, for sure. Actually, I did some research on memory pressure, and while it's still rather poorly documented how it's actually calculated internally (couldn't find a good technical description of the formula used), I did discover that the color of the memory pressure graph is apparently determined independently of its percentage.
The memory pressure percentage itself appears to have to do with how much "free memory" the system has as a percentage of its total (Mac OS is considering more than just what Activity monitor shows here, it has some internal metrics for some of this stuff). The color of the graph, on the other hand, appears to have to do (at least partially) with how often the system is having to page in and out, which is a much better metric of its actual performance impact.
Green memory pressure means relatively minimal performance impact (regardless of the pressure percentage). Yellow means higher paging activity but no thrashing (by the technical description of thrashing that would cause severe performance impacts), and red pretty much means the system is doing the functional equivalent of chocking on its own breath.
It's pretty much exactly what most people expected, but it's interesting that it calculates the two metrics separately. I rarely ran across red memory pressure on my 8GB system unless I was opening up the iOS simulator with all of my development IDEs open at the same time (that particular workload was especially hard on my 8GB system), but most other workloads ran it pretty much consistently into the yellow, but never had severe slowdowns.
Only compared to a groceries, a house or other commodities that generally increase in price over the years.
Consumer electronics and computer prices have pretty consistently dropped in real terms over the years - the numbers on the stickers stay the same but the specifications go up. Whatever computer you buy - PC, Mac, Chromebook, Raspberry Pi - it is safe to assume that it will cost you fewer loaves of bread than it did in 2023 and (unless its a Mac) probably come with twice as much RAM and storage. Apple don't get a free lollipop and a pat on the head for that.
In 2013 I paid £57 for a pair of Crucial 4GB DDR3 DIMMs for a PC I was building. Today, a pair of 8GB DDR5 DIMMS - i.e. twice the capacity and much faster - from the same seller only cost £50.
Also 2013 - Samsung 256GB "Pro" 2.5" SATA SSD - £175
2023 - Samsung 2TB M.2 PCIe V4 SSD - £143 (again, larger and much faster - If I stuck with 2.5" SATA I could get 4TB for £168)
...and that's why a $1600 laptop selling in 2023 should have twice the RAM and 4x the SSD of a $1600 laptop selling in 2013 - and it gets more ridiculous with every subsequent update. OK, the more expensive M3 Pro machines have just got a bump from 16GB to 18GB - but that's because they've reduced the number of physical RAM chips on the SoC from 4 to 3 so the RAM has to be a multiple of 3...
And that is why I criticize Tim Cook for Macs having soldered RAM and soldered SSDs. It's another one of his sneaky ways to maximize profits because, when Apple customers need more memory or more storage, they have to buy a new Mac instead of just buying third-party RAM or third-party SSDs.
Last edited:
It depends on how much GPU memory is required by the processes that are running. If you're running something that requires 4GB of VRAM, it's gonna leave the system with only 4GB of system RAM for other tasks, but Mac OS isn't going to try to allocate that for the GPU if no process currently requires it. It's allocated dynamically on an as-needed basis.
For GPU intensive workloads, however, 16GB is pretty easy to recommend, 8GB is pretty tight for applications that are going to need a lot of VRAM.
Ya, I’m sure that 16GB is an improvement, and I’m considering getting a 16GB M1 Mac Mini, I’m not saying that 16GB is needless for anyone at all. I think the idea of the base spec M3 MacBook Pro is to be a bridge between the MacBook Air and the high spec M1 Pro/M1 Max MacBook Pros that heavy pro users are going to likely get. So maybe it’s too expensive to be that bridge option, I don’t think it’s too expensive considering the hardware, but I’m always ok with the price coming down and saving more money. I tend to get my stuff refurbished to save, so not saying the price couldn’t possibly move down, though I’m sure Apple is probably a better judge than I of how far down they can practically drop the price. But I think it’s odd that so many here aren’t just saying “make the 8GB configuration cheaper”, they’re saying “the 8GB option shouldn’t exist at all”. I view the 8GB version as a way for average users to be able to still buy into the Pro lineup with all the nice extra features and hardware upgrades, and save a bit more money doing so. So I think it should remain as an option, and maybe get cheaper if Apple can actually afford to drop it further. It likely will be discounted quite often, so I could see it selling new at a discounted price of $1400 or $1500, and I think that’s effectively where it’d be if the 16GB version took the 8GB’s on the price ladder.
At $1400, I'd see it as a better deal. You are also getting the 512GB of storage, which, to Apple's credit, they did finally upgrade to across the whole lineup on the Pro. That was a welcome change.
I do personally see the price coming down in the not-too-distant future. For the time being, the M2 Pro systems are probably going to go on some pretty deep discounts as retailers start clearing out inventory, which I'm sure a lot of people are going to benefit from. I'm hoping it helps to get really good systems into the hands of more people who are looking for them.
This. Using inflation as an argument for computer pricing is absurd.
Not really. It's a way to force the SSD upgrade, improving the ASP.
Not sure tbh. They just dropped the 13-inch MBA price to open up a slot for the 15-inch. A price drop for MBPs would require them to drop the prices for MBA again.
The screen resolution is 3024 x 1964 which is 5,939,136 pixels (times the bit depth per pixel (32 bits?)). That, plus a possible buffer area of the same size, is always allocated and in use, whether a graphically-demanding app is in the picture or not.